The Green Medium is an Emerald Award-winning, youth-run blog that seeks to innovate how we discuss and inform ourselves on environmental concerns.

Mar 14 Life on the Beach...? Sand Mining - Kyle Folk

I'm back! Couple days later than I expected to be but well worth it. The Strathcona High School Lords raised an astonishing $466,881 (nearly half a million) for Jack Davis Hope Foundation. If you are interested to see what it's about there's more information on it here and a short recap video of this years scona initiative. If you are interested in volunteering or participating in next years initiative let me know!

Anyways back to life on the beach...?

It turns out a lot of our beaches are disappearing! Where? Well where do you think all those fancy windows and glass bottles are coming from? Those are some obvious things but sand is a huge part of our lives and it is in high demand. Sand is used to make much more than you think; including but not limited to concrete, cell phones, computers, microchips and paint. You probably use it every day if you brush your teeth, you use sand (yes it's most likely in your toothpaste). There really isn't a way to avoid using it. Unfortunately it's uncommonly talked about even among environmentalists and because of that sand mining is one of the of the least regulated mining operations in existence today. This is because it's so hard to tell if a beach has been mined. The sand adjusts to a new profile after just a few storms or days of high wind/rain making it seem like nothing has really changed.

Sand is actually in such high demand that Sand Theft is a real problem. Yes. People are stealing truckloads of sand for who knows what. You think it'd be a stupid thing to do. I can just imagine some conman thinking "Yeah c'mon guys it'll be easy, just take all the sand on this beach and move it over here!" The surprising thing is It's actually almost impossible to track. Click here for a short article on 500 truck loads of disappearing sand.

Although some of it is natural and there are some concerns about the impacts of sand mining it is simply not well known enough by the general population to be adequately dealt with at the level in which it needs to be addressed.

Here are a couple of sites that talk about sand mining among other things in more detail: (I put links to the sand mining forums/blogs of the pages)